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Here’s a dumb thought: Maybe Trump’s simply not that smart

I don’t ask this as someone who wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump at the point of a gun, not even if he were running against a Chia pet.

I really don’t.

I also don’t ask it in a lame attempt to be funny or sarcastic.

I mean this seriously: Is Trump stupid?

I ask because I see him doing stupid things over and over again – things that are clearly, objectively and strategically detrimental to himself and his supposed desire to be president.

And who does that other than someone who is simply not that bright?

The most recent example is the most egregious. In an ABC interview, the Trumpster – responding to a stinging rebuke at the Democratic convention by Khizr Khan, a broken-hearted Muslim father whose son, Army Capt. Humayan Khan, was killed in Iraq – first seemed to brush aside Khan’s speech. Bad enough.

Then he doubled down by saying this about Khan’s wife, who stood next to him on stage: “If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me.”

Then he tripled down, saying “While I feel deeply for the loss of his son, Mr Khan, who has never met me, has no right to stand in front of millions of people and claim I have never read the Constitution, (which is false) and say many other inaccurate things.”

Then he quadrupled down, saying essentially “did too!” in response to the Khan’s assertion that Trump had never sacrificed anything for the war effort.

Trump’s idea of sacrifice: “I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I’ve had tremendous success. I think I’ve done a lot.”

Do you see what I mean? These are not the responses of someone with a high-functioning hippocampus. They’re just not. If you or I were running for president, we’d know:

You don’t brush aside the grief of a Gold Star family, even if they oppose you. You simply say, as Trump’s campaign said later in a statement, “Captain Humayun Khan was a hero to our country and we should honor all who have made the ultimate sacrifice to keep our country safe. The real problem here are the radical Islamic terrorists who killed him, and the efforts of these radicals to enter our country to do us further harm.”

You certainly don’t use their grief to stoke religious bigotry by broadly suggesting Muslim women are muzzled by their husbands.

You don’t say someone has no right to criticize you – in the United States of America, for crying out loud – especially when Khan’s whole point was you’ve never read the Constitution. (Point. Set. Match.)

You don’t equate someone giving their life for their country to you creating jobs.

The fact that a 70-year-old businessman running for president doesn’t know better than to do these things when they are highly likely to alienate just about everyone, even most of his supporters, suggests several possibilities:

One, that he really doesn’t want to be president and never did. It was a lark that went too far and this is his way of making sure he doesn’t win. Two, he’s secretly a Democrat in Republican clothing who is intentionally trying to lose.

Or three, he’s simply not nearly as smart as he’d like you to believe he is.

And if he’s not that bright, do we really want him in the White House?

Sadly it is not a lark. He has a history of being a racist idiot. Just Google the hearings about him trying to get a casino and he said something to the effect of “that guy doesn’t look like an Indian to me.”

Trump is just one of those guys, born into money, thinks me can do no wrong. He put his company into bankruptcy once already and most of the jobs he talks about are low paying and no benefits. If he gets elected WOW!! get ready for Gong Show Two. You are right, he plays a very good game or just not thinking of the consequences of his actions.

When Trump first threw his hat in the ring, most people thought it was a joke until he started winning in the primaries. Then the people thought that sooner or later he would ‘fess up and we could go on with the task at hand. Now he is the GOP’s nominee. How did that happen? There’s a whole lot more people than Trump who are not that bright.

I don’t think he is stupid. I think he has lived an entitled life where everyone around him tells him what he wants to hear. What frightens and truly sickens me are the millions of our fellow Americans who are blindly following anything and everything he says!

Seriously….where the hell were you 8 years ago…I know where I was…in my office worried about my job while hundreds of my co-workers were being walked out. I know who I have to thank for still having my job and it isn’t George W.

I’m a nurse..to be charitable, If he were my dad I’d get him In to a neurologist for testing and an MRI. His father had Alzheimer’s not that he’s destined to develop it. But I’ve helped several family members who had dementia and he shows signs of poor impulse control, judgement issues, lack of empathy, even confabulation.

I googled his medical report released last winter. Never read anything like that from a physician. What frightens me and other commenters is that his fan base seem to tolerate his “word salad” speeches …just Donald fooling around!
And some comments from Sen Orrin Hatch…When he’s elected he’ll do what we want him to…..A puppet president? I’d fear an impeachment or even a coup if some of these pols, policy makers can’t see and hear Trump means what he says. This is who he is, there’s no big change in personality coming.

He’s dumb like a fox. Every time someone speaks the truth, with substance and common sense, Donald says something outrageous that diverts the attention away from the truth and back on him. Mission accomplished.

Great point from you and all the responses made. Especially the one about the possibility that Trump has early stages of Alzheimer’s or dementia …or is it just plain stupidity? Whatever it is, what does that say for his followers? Many scary thoughts for what has happened to this country.

I am not in favor of either Donald Trump or Hilloiary Clinton becoming president of the United States. Both are not the best choice, both have got bad things in their past that do not make either one of them a good choice.
Trump does say some stupid things, however, Hilliary is most definitely a really bad choice.
Donald has some things that amount to about the size of a anthill and the media does its worst into making it look like the size of Mt. Everest. Meanwhile, Hilliary has a whole lot of things in her past that are beyond the size of Mt.Everest and media personnel, like Andrew, try to make it look smaller than anthill.
Khizr Kahn is a muslim. Was Donald wise in down playing his sons’ death? NO.
But, then again, which sect of islam is Mr. Kahn a part of? Is he a shiite? Or is he a sunni?
Both hate each other. They have been killing each other for centuries.
Andrew probably is not familiar with the muslim practice of taquiia(sp),
where a muslim can lie to a non-muslim. He can say that he will not harm you at that moment, but, he can, under sharia law, harm you later. The muslim will not be guilty of a crime, because you are not a muslim, but, you are an infidel,
therefore no sin or crime has been committed.

Wow – no matter what the bad choices are, I will NOT vote for a man who has filed bankruptcy four times and came out the other side of each one a billionaire….I don’t care if he did it legally. He used the bankruptcy system to get out of paying his bills not because he couldn’t afford to – but because he didn’t want to pay them. I will not vote for a man who mocks handicapped people, calls people fat, ugly or lazy, demeans women for normal body functions, attacks Mexicans, Muslims and American Indians… I was raised better than that and I raised my kids to be better than that.

Yes. Trump is dumb. Is that a surprise? Have any of you guys had stupid bosses? How many much-less-bright-than-you teachers did you have when you were in school? How many times, when you took a test, did you realize you were smarter than the person who wrote the question?

Trump is a dope. The fact that he is a big name with a lot of money is mostly just luck, has nothing to do with his intelligence. Maybe he is an articulate dope, but he just has the gift of gab. AND! I am very interested in Poster Sue’s idea that he may be in an early stage of dementia!

Andrewto Heller: What a laugh on us it would be if Trump was truly a closet liberal Democrat and rigged the election by winning the Republican ticket. Flip the coin, maybe he’s running because he knew the Republican party was going to lose anyway and incapable of censoring himself. Trump might be just as surprised as many of us are that he actually won the nomination. If he actually won maybe he’d tone it down a bit, surround himself with an intelligent cabinet,…. NAH!

About The Author

Andrew Heller has been an enduringly popular newspaper columnist in Michigan for a long, long, long time. He wrote his first column for the Escanaba Daily Press way back in 1979. It was about his … Continue Reading

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